[HN Gopher] Show HN: Windows 7 GUI for the web
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Show HN: Windows 7 GUI for the web
Author : khangnd
Score : 144 points
Date : 2025-07-27 17:27 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (khang-nd.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (khang-nd.github.io)
| nosioptar wrote:
| This is awesome. I love that the readme contains pictures of
| everything.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| These visual elements have to be protected by intellectual
| property somehow. Has Microsoft ever legally persecuted these
| types of projects before? Or projects built upon such libraries?
|
| I'd be wary to build on top of these clones only to receive a
| cease and desist, but that's a fear of mine, I don't know if it's
| founded.
| poly2it wrote:
| It can be more difficult to claim copyright over shapes and
| patterns than you think.
| flykespice wrote:
| And somehow Tetris Company succeeded it..
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Only for the original Tetrominos, and even there there are
| just so damn many Tetris clones and spin-offs... that
| battle is lost.
|
| Side note: the iOS version of Tetris is an ad and gambling
| ridden hellscape, and that's a _licensed_ spinoff.
| xyst wrote:
| I have a gallery of cease and desist orders. I would love to
| add MSFT to the list.
| xyst wrote:
| Ah yes the days of "aero ui". Sad to hear Apple designers are
| taking cues from _old_ windows designs now.
| filcuk wrote:
| Everything new builds on top of the old.
| anthk wrote:
| Aero it's a blatant copy of Aqua.
| joshuaissac wrote:
| I wonder if this can be integrated with Electron and Tauri to
| provide native-looking user interfaces.
|
| Combined with a theme-to-CSS convertor, imagine an Electron app
| looking like a Windows app on Windows, and a GTK app on Linux,
| while following the colours and styles of the custom theme the
| user has selected in their OS.
| 90s_dev wrote:
| The reason I started hram.dev was so I could have a native
| platform to port 90s.dev to. I love the idea of having native
| host for retro GUIs. But I am not a huge fan of html/css/js
| combo. It feels tacked on because it _is_. I came up with a
| relatively novel and I think truly innovative GUI methodology
| in 90s.dev that I did not know how to explain so I haven 't
| truly shared with people how exciting it potentially is.
| Tomorrow I plan to put up a github-sponsors link with a few
| different projects, where for each $50 that I receive for a
| given project, I will work two hours on that project. This way
| the community can help sponsor me turning these things into
| realities.
| skgough wrote:
| I don't think you could 100% nail the Win7 glass or Win11 mica
| material without having transparency effects that have access
| to the compositor pipeline. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't
| try to get close enough!
| jmchuster wrote:
| > 7.css is a CSS framework for building interface components that
| look like Windows 7. It is built on top of the GUI backbone of
| XP.css, which is an extension of 98.css.
|
| Just an absolutely lovely line of text.
| threeducks wrote:
| 98.css: https://jdan.github.io/98.css/
|
| XP.css: https://botoxparty.github.io/XP.css/
| promiseofbeans wrote:
| Sort of mimics Windows itself - you famously have to do some
| archeology every time you want to change an important setting,
| and will work your way through many iterations of windows ui
| components as you do
| xcrunner529 wrote:
| Super cool. Anyone know if a similar library exists for Aqua?
| dybber wrote:
| The checkboxes doesn't look quite right on iOS
| kaltsturm wrote:
| Great work and idea! How can I use it without having tailwindcss
| changing all css?
| malikNF wrote:
| Every time I see something about windows7 coming up, I feel a
| little sad. 7 imo was the last good windows ms came up with. I
| remember upgrading to it was something worth bragging to your
| friends in school. There was so much excitement around it. After
| 7, something felt, broken, new features felt unnecessary, things
| got more user hostile, the magic, it was just gone!
| wredcoll wrote:
| Older people feel exactly the same way about windows2000... or
| sometimes 98... or 3.1...
| leonnatus wrote:
| more about xp than 2000
| bestham wrote:
| For me more about 2000 than XP. 2000 still felt like a
| Workstation OS and it was very responsive. XP themeing was
| the first thing I removed once I could not continue on
| 2000.
| therein wrote:
| Yeah, most people wouldn't say that about Win2000, but XP,
| definitely. XP Service Pack 2 was excellent.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| I used all of those versions but I'd still agree that Win7
| was the last good one. I still love the 95/98 aesthetic the
| most and it's what I try to replicate with my systems now,
| but the dropoff after Win7 is still much greater.
| saurik wrote:
| I think the usual adage is that every other version of
| Windows is pretty good.
| wolpoli wrote:
| I hadn't read anyone talk about how UI peaked at Windows 3.1
| through. Perhaps most people just start their desktop
| computing journey with 95.
| BrenBarn wrote:
| Yeah. I feel like the main thing was it was the last version
| that still had essentially user-controlled updates. By default
| it would auto-update, but you could have it not do that, or
| have it download the updates but not install them until you
| decided to, and you could deselect individual updates and just
| skip them.
|
| I suspect this is linked to its era: it came out on the cusp of
| the trend of having everything autoupdate on its own
| initiative. (I just looked it up and Firefox 15 came out around
| the same time and was the first version to have "silent
| updates".) This in turn came as some kind of tipping point was
| reached where it became simpler to assume everyone was always
| connected to the internet (and have some kind of "emergency
| mode" for when they weren't) than to assume they weren't (and
| have some kind of "online mode" for when they were). And that
| also led to the proliferation of telemetry and other such
| things that involve using that always-on-ness to talk back to
| the software company.
|
| I see this as part of a trend away from what I call "bounded
| transactions" and toward subscription-type models, and I think
| it's been one of the most corrosive developments in our
| society. The thing about Win7 was that once you had a computer
| up and running with it, it was up and running and would
| continue to be, and you could just kind of leave it like that.
| You had security issues to worry about, but you still had the
| option of being the one to worry about them. In the following
| years, everything began to shift towards the "you own nothing"
| model where so much of the functionality of "your" hardware and
| software was actually just a short-term lease with some company
| on the other end that could decide to rugpull you at their
| convenience.
| benbristow wrote:
| Did you have a Windows 7 Launch Party?
|
| https://gizmodo.com/this-incredible-windows-7-launch-party-v...
| pknerd wrote:
| why nobody tries KDE or GNOME?
| OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
| KDE and GNOME weren't as popular as Windows 7. Unless you mean
| porting Windows 7 to KDE as a theme?
| bilgi42 wrote:
| they also change theming too quickly sometimes. windows 7 is
| set, it's not going to change, ever
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| Very nice. Does anybody else find it a bit striking how
| gracefully this look has aged? With a little bit of tuning it
| could feel pretty modern.
|
| Modern UI design could stand to take not just a few pages but the
| majority of the book from both the Windows 7 variant of Aero and
| the OS X 10.9 variant of Aqua, in my opinion. Legibility,
| information density, and communication of interactability and
| widget function have all been lost as we've careened towards
| egregiously thick padding, low contrast, and low differentiation.
| flykespice wrote:
| I concur, I think the successor flat design trend has nailed on
| reducing the styling visual clutter and keeping the user just
| focused on the "substance" from the app UI whilst keeping the
| UI itself minimal with no distractions.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| The problem is that minimalism and maximalism in UI design
| exist on a kind of horseshoe curve. Extremely maximalist UI
| is indeed distracting, but past a certain point of pruning so
| is minimalism, just in a different way. Instead of having
| your eyes drawn away from the content by flashy widgets,
| you're poking and swiping to find the function you're looking
| for, like someone feeling around trying to find the exit in a
| pitch dark room.
| jszymborski wrote:
| I used Windows 7 in my formative years, so I'll always have a
| fond spot in my heart for it.
|
| That said, I really do think the Windows NT era had the best UI
| in terms of brute usability.
|
| Again, I love Aero's faux glass, cyan highlights, high gloss,
| etc... but it is indeed a lot of noise and I think it's a bit
| distracting.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| The 95-like look (of which I think the 2K variant is best)
| does have a bit of an edge in terms of usability, but it also
| looks considerably more dated. A similarly legible theme from
| that era that I think time has been more kind to is Platinum,
| the theme used by Mac OS from System 7.6.1 through Mac OS
| 9.2.1.
|
| Any new UI design looking to incorporate Aero's good bits
| would be smart to tone the look down a little.
| anthk wrote:
| The default theme from QTCurve and a good color scheme.
|
| On flat themes, I like Zukitre, which I modded the
| highlighting color to black instead of blue. It's the only
| usable theme I found not being either blinding light nor
| often unreadable dark. It has a grey neutral tone,
| something Apple understood for platinum if you worked on
| graphic design, video and photo editing, or as a journalist
| (the 99% of the Apple users in late 90's).
| miohtama wrote:
| Liquid glass is the new faux glass
| hypercube33 wrote:
| Windows 11 beta 1 I think had a mix of aero and windows 10s
| start menu and felt two to three times speedier than win10. I
| wonder what happened to ditch the transparency
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Who do I assign blame to for horrible modern UX design? Is it
| the hubris of designers who believe that the constraints of the
| human body should be felled by minimalist purity? Is it bean
| counters who weaponize industrial psychology to create flat,
| boring UI to increase engagement/addiction? Is it the average
| technology user who has simply become too stupid to use
| anything other than a touchscreen? Why does it seem like
| everyone I've talked to about this agrees that basically all
| modern technology products are boring and uninspired compared
| to just 15 years ago, but it also seems like we keep building
| (and buying) boring, uninspired technology products?
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| I'm a dev not a designer, but I'd personally point to a few
| things:
|
| - An influx of print/commercial/etc designers into UI design,
| who lack the full suite of knowledge and skills to design
| usable UI, crowding out the UI designer old guard
|
| - The likes of Dribbble and other social media kicking off
| self reinforcing minimalism trends within the field
|
| - The rise of "UI as branding" which places brand identity
| far above practical usability in terms of priorities
|
| There are other factors like indie devs not wanting to hire a
| designer for their projects and just phoning that part in
| (which flat is conducive to), but they don't have nearly as
| much sway on industry trends at large.
| johnebgd wrote:
| MacOS X 10.4 was peak Apple UI design from my personal
| experience. That metal look was pretty...
|
| Android, Windows and iOS all look similar now... macOS is
| shifting that way...
|
| Bring back skeuomorphic design...
| carlosjobim wrote:
| > With a little bit of tuning it could feel pretty modern.
|
| This little bit of tuning is called Shine 2.0 and is still the
| most modern desktop user interface, even though it was
| published in 2010:
|
| https://www.deviantart.com/zainadeel/art/Shine-2-0-for-Windo...
| ayaros wrote:
| That's because Windows 7 was the last release purely focused on
| usability on desktops. We all know what happened with Windows
| 8; Windows 10/11 still have to account for multitouch displays.
|
| Also, they screwed up the start menu/screen search in windows 8
| and it has sucked since then. :(
| hk1337 wrote:
| And used by phishers to make you think you got a Windows prompt.
| isomorphic- wrote:
| Unfortunately some of the elements aren't compatible with
| DarkReader.
| 1718627440 wrote:
| The last dialog looks crazily realistic. Is it possible to
| distinguish it from a real OS dialog without trying to move it?
| It looks awfully practical for phishing.
| sdotdev wrote:
| its crazy how good this library and Windows 7 in general looks
| even today. nice framework
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(page generated 2025-07-27 23:01 UTC)